The Problem With America's History Books

It has become commonplace to deplore U.S. students' dismal performance
in math and science when their test results are compared to those of
students in other advanced and not-so-advanced industrial countries.

But, it turns out, according to the Nation's Report Card, or National
Assessment of Educational Progress, the federally administered test
results released in June 2011, the area in which U.S. students perform
most poorly is actually U.S. history. According to the results, only 12
percent of high school students were proficient in U.S. history. And
only a scant 2 percent could identify the social problem addressed in
Brown v. Board of Education, even though the answer should have been
obvious from the wording of the question itself.

Historically-challenged students turn into historically-challenged
adults who make for unqualified citizens. Our republican system requires
a literate, educated, and knowledgeable public. No wonder Santayana's
famous comment that "he who forgets the past is condemned to repeat it"
has been borne out repeatedly over the past century and a quarter of
U.S. history.

In terms of history education, we face two basic problems. First, as
the Nation's Report Card indicates, students know very little history.
Second, much of what they do learn is extremely partial or flat out
wrong. Take, for example, the discussion of the atomic bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in one popular high school text--The American Past by Joseph Conlin--which happens to be used in Oliver's daughter's highly rated Los Angeles private high school.

In the few brief paragraphs devoted to the atomic bombings, which the
Newseum's 1999 panel of experts declared the most important news event
of the 20th century, Conlin manages to twice repeat the falsehood that
the bombs were used to avoid one million U.S. casualties in an invasion,
that Japanese fanaticism was "impossible to overstate," and that the
bombs ended the war.
Such complete ignorance or willful dismissal of contemporary
scholarship on the topic is unconscionable. Not only does Conlin fail
to mention the ongoing debate over the projected casualty estimates, he
ignores State and War Department studies contending that the Japanese
were not fanatics but would indeed fight fiercely to protect the
emperor, that Japanese leaders recognized that victory was impossible
and were trying to secure terms that would allow them to avoid
surrendering unconditionally, that the United States had broken the
Japanese codes and American leaders were fully aware of Japan's
desperate plight -- Truman referred to the July 18 telegram as "the
telegram from the Jap emperor asking for peace", that the U.S. knew that
the imminent Soviet invasion would finish the Japanese off once and for
all -- "fini Japs" when Stalin comes in Truman wrote, that the impact
of the atomic bombs was less than decisive because the U.S. had been
wiping out entire cities for months with its firebomb raids, and that it
was the dreaded Soviet invasion, which proved the bankruptcy of both
Japan's diplomatic and military strategy, rather than the atomic bombs,
that forced Japan's surrender.

Conlin neglects to mention that six of the seven five star U.S.
officers who earned their fifth star during the war are on record as
saying the atomic bombings were either morally reprehensible -- as did
Truman's Chief of Staff Admiral William Leahy -- or militarily
unnecessary. General Douglas MacArthur told former president Herbert
Hoover that the Japanese would have happily surrendered in May, almost
three months earlier, if the U.S. had told them they could keep the
emperor. While that might be an overstatement, wouldn't it be something
of interest to high school students?
People ignorant of the real facts of history fill the vacuum with
either a fancifully corrupt view or a mythic one. In the United States
that usually takes the form of a comforting fairy tale of American
exceptionalism -- the notion that unique among nations, the U.S. is
motivated by altruistic benevolence, generosity, and the desire to
spread freedom and democracy. Woodrow Wilson, a true believer in
America's mission, declared after Versailles, "At last the world knows
America as the savior of the world!"

Neither World War I, which Wilson lied the country into, or the
Treaty of Versailles is looked back upon very favorably today. Other
presidents, most notably Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, have voiced
similar sentiments, which they no doubt also sincerely believed. We're
still paying the price for the debacles they lied us into.

As the great independent journalist I. F. Stone wisely pointed out:
"All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose
officials smoke the same hashish they give out." And it becomes even
more dangerous if an ignorant public, indoctrinated with the same
cockamamie ideas as the nation's leaders, doesn't have the good sense to
question what they are spewing.

As we show in our recent book and forthcoming documentary film series
called The Untold History of The United States, what students learn
about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is only one small
part of a systematic effort to whitewash and sanitize U.S. history.

This is of great significance because people's view of the past not
only informs their actions in the present, it limits their sense of what
is possible in the future. It is time for a national conversation about
what this country's history has really been -- good and bad, warts and
all.

We are entering a period of history in which the American people will
either carve out a very different role for their nation in a rapidly
changing world -- a role that eschews the militarism and imperialism
that has marked the past century -- or it will continue blindly down the
present path of warmongering and decline with consequences only faintly
augured by those cataclysmic events in August 1945 when the U.S., once
and for all, finally achieved the "might" behind the "right," changing
the course of history for the foreseeable future.

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This blog is dedicated to Chamorro issues, the use and revitalization of the Chamoru language and the decolonization of Guam. This blog also aims to inform people around the world about the history, culture and language and struggles of the Chamorro people, who are the indigenous islanders of Guam, Saipan, Tinian, Luta and Pagan in the Mariana Islands. Pues Haggannaihon ha', ya taitai na'ya, ya Si Yu'us Ma'ase para i finatto-mu.

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The Revolution Will Not Be Haolified

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE HAOLIFIEDTinige’ as Guahu - 2003 (updated 2008)

You will not be able to ignore it che’lu * This time you will not be able to blame it all on Anghet * You will not be able to change channels * And watch Fear Factor, Rev TV of Salamat Po Guam because * The Revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be televised, nor will it be advertised * It will not be sponsored by the Good Guys at Moylan’s or the better guys at AK. * It will not be something easily explained by radio callers * Whether they be Positively Local, Definitively Settler, or Surprisingly Coconut * It will not be cornered by the Calvos and explained by Sabrina Salas * Matanane * After the story about the incoming B-52’s or 1000’s of Marines careening towards to Guam, and how we * should be economically energized and not terrorized. * Jon Anderson will have no TT anecdotes about it * and Chris Barnett won’t malafunkshun it because the revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be televised or editorialized * It will not be something canabilized with two inches here two inches there * Dubious headlines everywhere * Lee Weber will not edit it * Joe Murphy will not put it in his pipe and smoke it * Nor dream about it, or tell others the wonders and blunders of it. * There will be no letters to the editor quoting scriptures or denying its constitutionality * And there will be no American flag inserts saying these three colors just don’t run * As the revolution will not be editorialized

The revolution will not be televised or politicized * It will not play the same old gayu games * And promise you that same old talonan things. * The revolution will not wave at you as you drive by on Marine Drive * And seduce you with its hardworking eyes. * It will not be territorial or popular, and not encourage you with maolek blue. * The revolution will not put marang salaman po after its speeches to get more Filipino votes in the next election because the revolution will not be politicized

The revolution will not be televised, not be theorized * It will not be something GCC or UOG friendly. * There will be no books at Bestseller offering to help you lose something in 90 days * Or Rachel Ray helping you cook the revolution of your way. * Ron McNinch will not survey it * and will not poll people about their revolution of choice. * There will be no WASC review report demanding accountability demanding autonomy * And no beachcombing carpetbaggers will proclaim their own terminal authority * Over the histories, the laws, the thinking of those for whom they see nothing but corrupt and corrupting inferiority * The revolution will not be colonized

The revolution will not be televised, not be supersized. * The revolution will not be something you can buy at Ross, or get at blue light cost * It is not just red rice, kelaguan uhang, or popcorn with Tobacco sauce. * It doesn’t come with Coke and it doesn’t fit on a fiesta plate. * The revolution will not make you gof sinexy, cure your jafjaf, or make fragrant your fa’fa’ * The revolution will not force you to be where America’s empire begins * Or where Japan’s golf courses and Gerry Yingling’s credit card debt ends. * You won’t need a credit card, or be charged for the tin foil to cover your balutan * As the revolution will not be economized

The revolution will not be televised, blownback or militarized * There will be no more physical ordnance buried in people’s lands * And no more patrionizing propaganda buried in people’s minds * The revolution will not get you cheaper cases of chicken or increased commissary privileges. * It will not make freedomless flags feel more comfortable in your hands * Or make uniforms fit more snugly around your mind. * The revolution will not deny racism or exploitation * And not create histories about landfalls of destiny * But instead publicize the racism and evils of American hegemony. * The revolution will not be subsidized by construction contracts or the race of Senator Inouye or Congressman Burton * It will not be laid waste to by daisy cut budgets or Medicare spending limits * Instead it will be sustained by deep memories that refuse to die * The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised and will not polarize based on blood or color * It will not make your skin lighter * It will not make your skin darker * It will not test your blood the way Hitler or Uncle Sam would of done * It will not hate some and love others based on their time of naturalization * Or incept date of their compacts of free association. * But the revolution will help some find comfort, find strength, find power * In their connections to the land and to each other * Allow some to discover the sovereignty that can be found in solidarity * The revolution will take and remake this consciousness that doesn’t need to be televised * But does need to be revolutionized * The revolution will not be haolified * The revolution will not be haolified